1) Anna Kiesenhofer of Austria shocked the cycling world by winning gold in the women's road race at the Tokyo Olympics. She escaped from the peloton early in the race and stayed away for the entire 85 mile race, despite a furious chase from elite riders. 2) The Dutch favorites were confused about Kiesenhofer's position and status in the race due to the lack of race radios, which are usually used to communicate information between riders and support staff. They thought the chase was over when it was not. 3) Kiesenhofer, a 30-year-old mathematics PhD with no teammates, could not believe she had won until the final meters, securing Austria's

1. The Math Ph.D. Who Just Shocked Olympic Cycling
Austria’s Anna Kiesenhofer escapes early to fend off a confused Dutch
superteam and capture gold
Wall Street Journal
July 25, 2021
Anna Kiesenhofer of Austria crosses the line to win the gold medal
in the women’s cycling road race.
Photo: AP
Oyama, Japan
The mathematician pedaled away from the bunch, right at the start. It
was a flyer, to test her limits, and see how it goes.
Anna Kiesenhofer wasn’t considered a big threat in Sunday’s Olympic
women’s road race. The Austrian cyclist wasn’t considered a threat at
all. Her name did not appear on any list of pre-race contenders.

2. She was so unthreatening, Kiesenhofer assumed the big guns in the race
would let her ride away at the beginning for a bit.
She assumed correctly. They did.
Then Kiesenhofer stayed away, for the whole incredible thing, 85
miles, up and down, over the flats, through the mountains, in the late
July heat, with a ferocious pack of riders—cycling superstars, world
champions, national team juggernauts—trying to chase her
down…until some seemed not to know Kiesenhofer remained up the
road, alone.
Confused? You’re not the only one.
At least a few cyclists were confused, too, when they crossed the finish
at Fuji International Speedway, presuming they were the first riders to
do so…only to discover that the race had been won 75 seconds before
by a 30-year-old mathematics Ph.D.
It was a mind-boggling result that stunned Kiesenhofer herself.
“I couldn’t believe it, until the final meters,” she said.
A former pro with Lotto-Soudal women’s team, Kiesenhofer now
teaches and does postdoctoral research at a polytechnic institute in
Lausanne, Switzerland. She is self-coached. Though she trained
extensively to prepare for the Games, she did not come to Tokyo with
medal expectations. She raced with no teammates.
Finishing in the Top 25 would have been a nice result, she said later.
The day before the women’s race, Kiesenhofer watched an early
breakaway in the Olympic men’s race and mulled attempting the same
maneuver.
That looks cool, she thought.

3. Kiesenhofer figured it might work for a while. It’s not uncommon for
a peloton to let a few riders get up the road in the early miles, before
eventually revving up the pace, and reeling them in.
Off Kiesenhofer went, at the gun.
“Kilometer zero,” she called it.
Over the early stages of the race, she and a handful of breakaway
colleagues built a gap of more than 10 minutes. It was a substantial
margin of time, but the peloton contained so many experienced
professionals, including the decorated Dutch superteam featuring
champions Annemiek van Vleuten, Marianne Vos, and 2016 Olympic
road race winner Anna van der Breggen.
Surely the big names would yank Kiesenhofer back, especially when
the early breakaway group started to fall apart and Kiesenhofer found
herself alone.
A solo rider on their own is usually no match for the strength—and the
aerodynamics—of a motivated peloton, and nowhere would a peloton
be more motivated than at an Olympic Games.
Kiesenhofer kept thinking she’d get caught. How could she not get
caught?
“I was always a bit scared,” Kiesenhofer said.
Still, she gave all she had. These Games had been a dream she’d long
targeted amid her Ph.D. studies. If she was ever going to lay it all out,
it would be here, in these tree-lined climbs leading down to the final
laps on the smooth speedway tarmac.
“I couldn’t have given more than I did,” Kiesenhofer said.

4. Back in the peloton, there was energy, but not decisiveness. Attacks
came and went, pushing the pace and narrowing the group to a single-
file ribbon, but there was never a successful, consequential move.
Technology was a factor. In professional races, riders are equipped
with earpieces that allow them to communicate with team personnel
traveling behind in support cars. Riders listen for updates about the
course and potential hazards—but also, importantly, they can be told
what riders are up the road, and what sort of effort is needed to catch
up.
Olympic road racing allows no such technology. The riders have no
radio contact with cars. They get time gap information from motorbikes
on the course, or on occasions when they’re within earshot of team
personnel, but this information delivery is spottier than someone in
your ear, telling you exactly what’s going on.
This is apparently why the Dutch super team did not ramp up a
ferocious pursuit of Kiesenhofer in the closing kilometers. After
collecting the remains of the original breakaway, they thought the reel-
in work was done.
You may have seen it by now: the Dutch veteran racer van Vleuten,
crossing the finish line next to the speedway grandstand, smiling, arms
raised, under the impression that she’d won gold.
She didn’t know Kiesenhofer had clinched it already.
Now there was heartbreak amid the surprise. A gold medal would have
been a poetic result for van Vleuten. In 2016, she’d spent the night of
the women’s road race in a hospital in Rio de Janeiro after a horrifying
crash that occurred as she was leading the race, likely en route to gold.
Now gold eluded her again, in far more surreal fashion.

5. Van Vleuten later confessed to “mixed feelings.” She was proud of her
beautiful silver medal— the first of her career—but she sounded
frustrated by the confusion and the lack of race radios to give clarity
about what was going on.
Bronze medalist Elisa Longo Borghini of Italy, however, said she knew
a solo rider had successfully crossed beforehand.
“I knew that I was third,” she said.
Kiesenhofer had been first, though she was still getting used to what it
meant. After the medal ceremony, the new Olympic champion was
escorted to a press conference room to speak to the media. When they
opened the door, Kiesenhofer walked straight past the podium at the
front of the room, until someone pointed her in the right direction.
“I was about to go to the back of the room,” Kiesenhofer confessed.
The mathematician went up to the front, where she’d been all day, and
belonged.